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Weird Gravity in Canada Blamed on Hefty Glaciers
www.livescience.com...
Originally posted by tiddly54
Isnt that, except for the mention of the Van der Waals Forces, exactly what gravity is considered by the majority to be? the attraction beetween masses? larger masses ie those with more atoms, having a larger effect?
so the same force is not on two atoms, unless they are exactly the same distance from the centre of the mass the pull of gravity is being measured from.
In fact, your head has less of an accelearation towards the earth then do your feet, altough the difference, though measurable, is not enough to really cause any ill effects.
of course, when much stronger forces of gravity are in queestion, such as over the event horizon of a black hole, the effect is noticable, very much so, and objects will become streched. eg if you were in there yould have normal head, but long torso, girraffe like legs, and really really long feet.
this effect i have heard reffered to as spagittifacation
originally posted by: netbound
Until you can come up with something better, I’m afraid Einstein rules.
General Relativity has worked quite well for the past 100 years. The reason scientists have attempted to replace it with a quantum equivalent isn’t because it doesn’t work; it’s because they would like to be able to explain all the known forces using the same methodology/language. The strong, weak and electromagnetic forces lent themselves well to quantum mechanics. Gravity, however, seems to be a different animal.
Einstein’s approach is different. He didn’t treat gravity as a force, but rather as a consequence of the of the geometry of spacetime in the presence of mass. It’s not viewed as an attractive force, but is a warpage of spacetime in the vicinity of massive bodies/objects. Although the mathematics of general relativity is diificult (but elegant), the concept is simple enough. GR is strictly a theory of geometry. It describes how objects interact with each other by changing their geometric distribution within spacetime.
It may be that gravity just doesn’t lend itself well under the umbrella of particle physics/quantum mechanics, and scientists are heading down the wrong path by insisting it must be particulate (graviton) in nature. They’re so obssessed with coming up with a Theory of Everything (what an arrogant name), though, that they continue down this path. It may turn out that we’re just not seeing the forest for the trees.
Have fun!!
originally posted by: masterp
originally posted by: netbound
Until you can come up with something better, I’m afraid Einstein rules.
General Relativity has worked quite well for the past 100 years. The reason scientists have attempted to replace it with a quantum equivalent isn’t because it doesn’t work; it’s because they would like to be able to explain all the known forces using the same methodology/language. The strong, weak and electromagnetic forces lent themselves well to quantum mechanics. Gravity, however, seems to be a different animal.
Einstein’s approach is different. He didn’t treat gravity as a force, but rather as a consequence of the of the geometry of spacetime in the presence of mass. It’s not viewed as an attractive force, but is a warpage of spacetime in the vicinity of massive bodies/objects. Although the mathematics of general relativity is diificult (but elegant), the concept is simple enough. GR is strictly a theory of geometry. It describes how objects interact with each other by changing their geometric distribution within spacetime.
It may be that gravity just doesn’t lend itself well under the umbrella of particle physics/quantum mechanics, and scientists are heading down the wrong path by insisting it must be particulate (graviton) in nature. They’re so obssessed with coming up with a Theory of Everything (what an arrogant name), though, that they continue down this path. It may turn out that we’re just not seeing the forest for the trees.
Have fun!!
But GR doesn't display gravitational attraction, only space deformation.
In other words, an object under the influence of a gravitational field, if gravity was only about space deformation, wouldn't fall, it would just have to apply different forces to counter the space deformation.
But in reality objects fall to their gravitational well, which means that there is something beyond space deformation.
originally posted by: Darkpr0
I've been wandering around the 'net lately trying to find a good theory about gravity that holds some serious water. I've found that a lot of them, in response to something that humans really aren't sure about, is to find something horrendously complex and usually arbitrary.
A few places state that we have no way of measuring gravity. Riiiiight.
So, in order to put my feeble brain at ease I've set myself to pondering the question of gravity. I've taken a look at the graviton theory. If gravitons exist, they're supposed to be massless. How, then, do places with more mass have more gravity? Shouldn't mass be irrelevant if gravitons are massless? And how would a particle that is both invisible and has no mass exert a force as we know it?